This was one of the first Photoshop projects I completed independently during my second semester in the Digital Design Graphics Technology (DDGT) program. The assignment, titled Family Photos, allowed students to apply the skills they had learned to restore and enhance old personal family photographs.

The image below is of my Great Grandma, Isabel Martinez, and my second cousin, Juan Antonio. Please hover over the image to view the changes I made using Photoshop. The original photo had a weathered sepia tone with several light scratches and visible signs of aging. In addition, facial features were somewhat obscured, so I focused on restoring and enhancing them for clarity.

More specifically, I began by applying a layer mask combined with the Dust and Scratches filter to remove minor imperfections. I then used the Clone Stamp tool to address remaining issues such as folds, creases, and larger scratches that were not fully corrected by the filter. From there, I applied adjustment layers, including Hue, Levels, and Brightness, to improve contrast and bring the image out of its faded state.

Next, I used Dodge and Burn techniques to enhance depth and emphasize key details, particularly facial features that had been lost over time. After that, I applied sharpening to reduce blur and improve overall image clarity, helping the restored photo stand out more clearly compared to the original.

Overall, this project served as a valuable learning experience that introduced me to a wide range of Photoshop tools and helped me become more comfortable working with restoration techniques for black-and-white and aged photographs. Feel free to click on the images for a better view.

After gaining some experience with black-and-white restoration, I applied the same tools and techniques to a photo of my Grandpa Jordan. In this project, I used Dust and Scratches filtering, manual cleanup techniques, adjustment layers to recreate realistic coloration, and a custom border to mimic the original photo style. I also applied a Gaussian Blur to reduce digital noise and smooth imperfections, as well as a Neural Filter to enhance sharpness and restore clarity. Please feel free to hover over the image to compare the before-and-after versions.